“People are getting fed up with both major parties and [liberal Republican nominee] Dede [Scozzafava] has a lot of baggage up there,” a prominent Washington DC business lobbyist told me on Sunday. That apparently is benefitting Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman in his bid for the upstate New York seat that Republican Rep. John McHugh left to become secretary of the army.

The Club for Growth, Concerned Women of America, former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) and evangelical leader Gary Bauer have all endorsed Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate.

The divide could foreshadow bigger troubles ahead for a party that hopes to make big gains in the House in 2010 and dreams of taking back the majority. Some members think that will be impossible as long as the party is divided over supporting centrist candidates.

WASHINGTON – Demure Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, but since then has not made many waves. It might, however, be part of a political wave a year from now, thanks to a direct descendent of Benjamin Franklin.

WASHINGTON - Maneuvering to boost prospects for sweeping health care legislation, Senate Democrats hope first to win quick approval for a bill that grants doctors a $247 billion increase in Medicare fees over a decade but raises federal deficits in the process, officials said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Handing President Barack Obama a partial victory in his effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, House Democrats on Thursday repelled a Republican effort to block transfer of any of the detainees to the U.S. Instead, by a 224-193 vote, the House stood by a Democratic plan to allow suspected enemy combatants held at the controversial facility in Cuba to be shipped to U.S. soil-but only to be prosecuted for their suspected crimes.

“Those who support the culling of rabbits surely think it’s good to use the bodies for a good cause. But it feels like they’re trying to turn the animals into an industry rather than look at the main problem,” Anna Johannesson of Vilda kaniners värn (‘Society for the Protection of Wild Rabbits’) told the local Vårt Kungsholmen newspaper.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Despite concerted government-led and lender-supported efforts to prevent foreclosures, the number of filings hit a record high in the third quarter, according to a report issued Thursday.

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had cancer surgery earlier this year, was kept at a hospital overnight after she became drowsy and fell from her seat aboard an airplane. Court officials blamed a reaction to medicine.